On February 7, 1964, Pan Am Yankee Clipper flight 101 from
London Heathrow lands at New York’s Kennedy Airport—
and “Beatlemania” arrives.

It was the first visit to the United States by the Beatles, a
British rock-and-roll quartet that had just scored its first No.
1 U.S. hit six days before with “I Want to Hold Your Hand.”
At Kennedy, the “Fab Four”—dressed in mod suits and
sporting their trademark pudding bowl haircuts—were
greeted by 3,000 screaming fans who caused a near riot
when the boys stepped off their plane and onto American
soil.

On December 18, 1620, the English ship Mayflower arrived at
modern-day Plymouth, Massachusetts, and its passengers
prepared to begin their new settlement, Plymouth Colony.

On August 20, 1619, “20 and odd” Angolans, kidnapped by
the Portuguese, arrived in the British colony of Virginia and
are then bought by English colonists.

The arrival of the enslaved Africans in the New World marked
the beginning of two and a half centuries of slavery in North
America.

Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry, representing the U.S.
government, sailed into Tokyo Bay, Japan, with a squadron
of four vessels on this day in 1853. For a time, Japanese
officials refused to speak with Perry, but under threat of
attack by the superior American ships they accepted letters
from President Millard Fillmore, making the United States
the first Western nation to establish relations with Japan
since it had been declared closed to foreigners two
centuries before.

Millard Fillmore
(January 7, 1800 – March 8, 1874)

On June 17, 1885, the dismantled Statue of Liberty, a gift of
friendship from the people of France to the people of America,
arrived in New York Harbor after being shipped across the
Atlantic Ocean in 350 individual pieces packed in more than
200 cases. The copper and iron statue, which was reassembled
and dedicated the following year in a ceremony presided over
by U.S. President Grover Cleveland, became known around the
world as an enduring symbol of freedom and democracy.

The Statue of Liberty’s face before it was installed.